


The Moments of Her

by aNightofDarkTrees



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:20:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26011030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aNightofDarkTrees/pseuds/aNightofDarkTrees
Summary: The human body is an incredible thing. Many times in his life he has appreciated the capacity of his body, but not anymore. Now he hates it.What if the moment between Stevie and Dmitri on the stairs happened before he returned to Russia? What if it happened before Dmitri was captured and abandoned by the US government? What would she have meant to him there in the darkness of Russian prisons?
Relationships: Stevie McCord/Dmitri Petrov
Kudos: 11





	1. Torment

**Author's Note:**

> So as I mentioned in my other Dmitri fic this is the other project I was working on. I loved Stevie and Dmitri together, but I thought at times Dmitri's character was poorly written. What he endured in that Russian prison was really only discussed in a couple of episodes and then we went back to acting like he was a totally normal dude. I just didn't buy that. 
> 
> This work is definitely a bit darker and will not follow the TV show as closely. Also apologies in advance, I do my best to proof read, but I am sure I missed a couple of things as usual.

The human body is an incredible thing. Many times in his life he has appreciated the capacity of his body, but not anymore. Now he hates it.

He hates the strength of his flesh over the weakness of his mind. Hates that every time he thinks, “Ok surely this will be enough to end it,” his body endures and heals and prepares itself for even more torment. He hates his body almost more than he hates his captors, for they long ago made it clear they did not care if lived or died, so it is his body that keeps him here.

He lost his mind sometime ago. It comes back on occasions such as this, but for the most part it is just him and the body. A conscious soul and a collection of meat and bone.

In the dark. Forever.

He wishes he was older. Wishes he had more memories to draw upon. Wishes that his body wasn’t endowed with the strength of youth, but that was not his lot. So he prevails.

Has it been a year? Has it been two?

They break something else. At least electricity usually comes next, he could use the temporary deadening of his nerves regardless of how painful a process that is as well.

He will die in this hole.

He will die and she will never know his name.

Pain is a funny thing. But then so is solitude, and he is not sure which of these broke his mind first. He is equally unsure why a 2 minute exchange between him and Stephanie McCord shines like a beacon in his shattered mind.

He remembers every second of that encounter. In a different time. In a different place. He sat with Henry, Professor McCord, the man who ruined his life, whatever you want to call him, and casually discussed the exchange of his sisters life for the betrayal of his country…

With his ethics professor.

It’s actually the more sane parts of his mind that stumbles on these points, the rest of him finds them unimportant.

Regardless, she walked in and the flash of panic on the professor’s face told him it was someone he shouldn’t meet before she had even walked around the corner.

But she walked around the corner and headed up the stairs anyway. Talking over her shoulder to her father, still obvious to his presence.

And he was so not oblivious to her presence it was dangerous.

When she did turn and notice him, Henry, who was his handler, and his recruiter into this whole mess to begin with, couldn’t remember his cover name. His ease in moving forward was entirely self interested. He had been drawn to her.

But she had tickets to fetch, and clearly a man in the car waiting (though what kind of name was Jareth anyway), and she headed up the stairs, but he caught her curious glance back just as she caught him staring.

He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know anything else about Stephanie McCord. And it didn’t matter, because what he did know was his mind’s favorite drug to block out the pain.

The sound of her voice. The sleek lines of her body in that flowing black dress. The color of her skin and the smooth lines of her collar bone.

He would shamelessly obsess over some particular facet as they broke his bones and tore his ligaments.

He couldn’t think of Talia, the real reason he was here. The real reason he had given up his life and freedom. He had made a deal with the devil, his life for hers. She was his little sister of course he made that deal.

Of course the devil knew he would.

But he couldn’t think of her, here in this place, he wouldn’t allow himself to, because she was his little sister, and even as siblings love, they can hate.

In the early days, when he still found himself trying to figure it out how he had gotten here. How his life had ended up so far from what he had expected, he thought of his sister and it had helped, but somewhere in the pain things changed.

When he was left dangling for hours, and hours, and hours…

When he twitched in his unconsciousness and the bloody openings on his wrists that had started to scab around the embedded rope ripped open anew…

When they broke the first rib, and then the second…

When they fractured his cheekbones with a particularly fine set of brass knuckles and he nearly choked on the blood…

When he realized it had only been 46 hours…

He began to hate that he had chosen to trade his life for his sisters, and he had begun to hate her for living as he was tormented… and then he hated himself for even thinking it.

So he vowed he would not think of her. Talia. The only women, the only person, who knew him and loved him in this world. He had chosen to give his life for hers. He would not blame her for that. He would not die hating her.

So he didn’t think of her. He refused to think of her in this hell hole.

He also refused to tell them what they wanted to hear.

They said they would kill him. They said they would turn him loose into a Russian prison, and tell the prisoners he had been America’s bitch, so now it was time he was theirs.

They said they would find his sister, and bring her into this hell with him, and then…

They left.

He didn’t know about the death of Maria and the ensuing power struggle for months. It might have even been a year. After those first 46 hours of torture his captors disappeared. He was knocked unconscious and when he woke he was in a different place all together.

They called it “Mertvets Yama” The deadman’s pit. Because that’s what it was.

Everyone here was dead. Legally. Even his former tormentors had likely been told he was dead. To everyone but the few people who knew of this place he was dead. He recognized some of the names of the prisoners, men and women that had been ‘dead’ for decades and he knew what his fate was.

Death was too easy. To be Russian was to suffer. To betray Russia, Mother Russia, as he had, was to suffer to death… not die easily.

And when the daily torture started up again he had wished for his former captors. They wanted information, but these men, these men wanted his pain, they wanted his screams and blood on the floor, they wanted his suffering.

Information was just a bonus.

There were times, in the dark, that he curses his stupidity, his trust in the Americans. He was wrong to trust them, they didn’t care anymore for him then his government would care for a turned American. He is expendable. Has been since he was born.

It’s ironic, painfully so, that this understanding was one of the very things used to turn him. His disgust for Russian expenditures of human life throughout history. To be Russian was to offer up your life and body in service of a government you might hate. But that didn’t matter it was what you did. There was this silent understanding among all Russian people that this was what you did. And it was this pride in their mutual suffering that united the citizens of Russia in a way that the Americans would never understand.

But as they break his body, day after day after day. And it heals over and over and over again. He never forgets why it was that he signed away his soul. He had saved his sisters life. Of that he was sure. She would be cured and Henry would not let his government take her.

In that much he trusted.

Had he been able to trust his own government with her fate, trust his own people to save her life… maybe he would not be here in the dark.

And it was here in the dark, as his mind abandoned him and his body prevailed that he had turned to Stephanie McCord, and the miracle of her memory had brought him some measure of peace.

And he welcomed it, even as it drove him further and further from reality.

**********

So time passed in the hole. He suffers lurches of sanity that almost succeed in breaking him. But they pass. And he spends his time lost in the moments of her. That woman he barely knows and yet knows everything about.

It becomes his drug and he endure better than the others. His insanity -this obsessive alternate reality- protects him while his body is destroyed.

And he counts his scars by the memories of her. He traces the brands on his skin. The weeks they had amused themselves with burning he had traced the path of the black ribbon at her throat. It was odd and entrancing the way it trembled with her pulse. The way its soft vibrating rhythm had shifted when his hand held her gloved one.

Was it honestly possible he had never touched her skin? Never felt its velvet warmth?

The rough scars of manacles and ropes that trace his wrists and ankles from the many hours spent hanging are paired with perfectly placed swirls of gold and brown in her hair. He almost laughed now when he thought about his first experience with stress positions in those early hours of his capture a lifetime ago. That was nothing. Nothing.

He traces the rough whirls of the scars on his wrists and imagines he is running his fingers through her hair.

There was a blade fanatic in residence. He almost liked him. The pain there was different, sharper and cleaner. He tried not to let his relief show when they brought him to that bloody room. This torture he could take better than any other. In the raised silver scars of this torture were the memories of her neck and chest. As he traced them he imagined the rough pads of his finger tips dancing over the delicate juncture of her neck and shoulders, tracing the fine bones of her chest. 

Sometimes he would lay there in the dark tracing those particular scars for hours utterly entranced. 

He saves the image of her back -so close to him moving up the stairs- for when they break out the whips. He can’t believe how unbearably painful it is. Can’t believe this was once such common punishment. They whip him for weeks. And they are creative in their sadism. Artists with an empty canvas. And as he screams he sees the smooth lines of her back, the small but defined ridges of the muscles in her shoulders.

And when they break out the iron tipped whip and he almost begs for mercy as they heat it over and over and over again. He imagines he had pulled her back off the stairs against him. He imagines the press of her against him. He traces the shape of her body against his like a prayer until he is far, far, from the blood and pain.

He has never seen those scars, but he feels them sometimes as he sleeps against the stone floor. Ridges of ruined flesh pressing back against him where nothing used to be.

And he imagines the press he feels is her, a phantom form against his back holding him through the night.

The circular electric burns are her ears. The scars and pain of broken bones are her mouth. But the hidden brokenness of his ribs, one of which seems to always be broken, that pain that has no scar. That is her eyes - untouchable yet present with every aching breath.

The list goes on. 

And so his body endures, covered in the physical marks that trap the moments of her. 

And so his mind endures locked away and spared by the moments of her.

He has been tracing scars and memories for days when he begins to notices that this is a longer break than they usually take.

It has been days since they came for him. 3 days… 4 days?

He tries to trace back the time. He is fairly sure there has never been this long of a break.

Maybe they have given up on him and are trying starvation.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but no that isn’t right either, he recalls the unusually large meal yesterday and he was fed again early today.

What was it then? Had they found a more interesting toy? Was something happening out there in the world?

He stopped his thoughts there. He didn’t think about the beyond. There was the hole. There was the pain. And there was her. That was it.

After 6 days he was sure something was up. The guards and tormentors kept starring at him. They wanted to take him out of that cell make him scream. They didn’t want to keep feeding him the usually large portions.

Something was happening so he began to pull himself toward sanity. Rebuilding brick by brick who he was all the while holding the memories of her close least they come for him again. All the while prepared to free fall back into insanity.

He paid attention, his mind clearing. They were waiting, just as he was, his captors where waiting for something.

It seemed they did not know what anymore then he.

And for some reason, this gives him hope.


	2. Sanity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for chapter 2! Hopefully I will have a third up tomorrow. I don't know how many chapters this will be, probably 5 or 6? Hope you guys enjoy and as always apologies for any typos!

He doesn’t remember leaving the hole. He doesn’t remember how it started. The last thing he remembers is breakfast.

He should have known there was a reason that, for once, the gruel actually had some flavor.

He is unsure whether he appreciates or despises the stollen exit from that place. Then again he had no recollection of his entrance either.

His newly rebuilt sanity recognizes immediately that he should have treasured that fact as a sign of hope. Just as it now recognizes his similar exit as a sign of hopelessness. He didn’t know where at all Mertvets Yama was. There would be no reason to keep him alive, he had no information to leverage for his life.

Then again he had no information to leverage for his life. So perhaps that did mean they meant to keep him alive.

Sanity is confusing and tiring.

Regardless of the motives, he had a feeling. Deep down in that part of him that only once steered him wrong, he has a feeling he will not return to the pit regardless of the outcome of this little field trip.

He is in a van of some kind a black hood over his head, but he is not alone there is another body here in the back. More than one, of course there are guards, but there is another breathing somewhere close with the ragged breaths of one who has newly broken ribs.

His sanity is unsure what to make of that, but it devotes some time in examining a thousand different reasons and outcomes.

Not many are pleasant.

The drive is not short and it is dark the entire way. They do not stop, but he doesn’t sleep. He traces the drive in his head over and over. Counts the steady breaths of the guards.

Its maybe 6 hours later when they stop. And they wait.

The broken man beside him is pulled to the front. There are more people up there than expected made obvious by the cramped sounds of bodies as they make room.

They are talking in hushed intensity. It is the sound of a briefing. This is some kind of mission. And he can’t figure out his role.

What is he doing here.

The sanity strains for an answer, and as it strains he becomes more and more angry. The only thing that makes any sense at all is some kind of swap. But who would want him and what would Russia want for him?

He doesn’t want to play this game any more. He doesn’t want to be a pawn in the hands of power any more.

He had resigned himself to Mertvets Yama, and he doesn’t have it in him to face some new horror. He had given up his life to save Talia.

Would he have to do it again…

All over again.

A part of his mind says that maybe it’s the Americans, maybe they wanted him back, maybe they didn’t break their promise and they are coming to save him.

But he doesn’t buy that. Doesn’t buy that for one fucking second.

Oh sure it might be them on the other side of whatever the hell this was. But he wanted no part of it. He had no interest in whatever the cost would be for saving him. No interest in paying off any imagined debt for saving him.

None.

Someone reaches for him, ripping off the hood and he blinks reflexively at the headlights beaming from directly across the raised gates in front of him.

A border. A glance at a sign. The Finish border.

It was a swap, and those were American SUVs. He keeps himself very still.

There is a man his features invisible in the shadow of the high beams standing at the border. An agent to his side yanks ragged breath out of the seat beside him, and he catches a glimpse of the man’s face.

He could be his brother. Sanity knows exactly what to think of that, clearly some kind of trick for the Americans. They would probably fall for it. And he would be shot.But the figure in the road turns away and the others begin to back up.

They didn’t fall for it. Interesting.

Sanity wonders who is in the road.

Dmitri doesn’t want to think about it.

And the agents are yelling around him shouting,

“He’s leaving!” “We’re gonna lose him.”

“What do we do? They didn’t go for it.”

And the figure in the lights steps forward again and he is yanked out of the van. He hasn’t stood on his own legs in a long time and it hurts. Everything is stiff and cracking. He stumbles as they yank him forward.

The agent beside him is on the phone hissing frantically his Russian strangely accented, “What are your orders. We need a decision.”

The pale man holding his arm watches silently. The anger quietly building in his head bursts across his face. He is done with this game. Regardless how it ends he is done.

The agent with the odd accent nods, “Do it. Release prisoner number 2.”

And they drag him forward his anger the only thing that keeps him from hissing in pain.

When he sees Henry standing there the anger turns to fury and he makes no effort to hide it. Henry makes no effort to temper the emotion on his face either though he doesn’t buy it. Not for one goddamn second.

Sanity takes note of the man that passes him with shock trying to get his attention. He ignores it.

The fury fights with contempt as he spits at Henry’s feet. How long will they wait before they ask the impossible of him once again.

A month. Two?

It will take at least that long before his body is healed in any significant way. And here in the dark underbelly of intelligence whose to say anyone even knows he’s alive.

Expendable to an entirely new degree.

Sanity is screeching at him now as he walks forward and he finally tunes in for just a moment. Long enough to recognize the women in the car.

The secretary of state doesn’t show up to prisoner swaps. What is she….

 _It was Peter Buckley you IDIOT!!!_ his mind screams

_PETER BUCKLEY_

And the anger crashes under the tsunami of relief. He was not expendable to them. He had been a price. Some sort of price, and now they were paying that price back. They paid it in the flesh and blood of perhaps their greatest known intelligence failure.

Just as Russia paid in its.

Sanity is delirious with relief and joy. Dmitri reserves judgment, but he doesn’t fight it as he is propelled into the arms of Henry McCord.

There is a nurse in the SUV. A nurse, Henry, and the one guard that is driving.

He is surprised by space. The nurse looks at him questioningly, but doesn’t approach. He shakes his head.

“They have done nothing for 6 days.” Sanity reminds him it’s likely been 7 now. He ignores that. Just as he ignores his thickly accented English and rough voice.

The nurse nods in a I’m here if you need me kind of way. And that’s that.

**********

The human body is an incredible thing. Many times in his life he has appreciated the capacity of his body, and now he finds himself grateful for it once more. The doctors stare and categorize his injuries. He can’t decide if he is impressed or disgusted at the immense stack of papers that detail every injury they discovered. And he’s sure they probably missed some. They are up front with him about the costs of his torture.

65% lung capacity.

Limit range of movement in this joint.

And that one and…

Let’s just chalk it up to limited range of motion.

They talk about his future of chronic pain even though he feels fantastic after a couple of weeks. They tell him his mind will recalibrate and the pains he feels as minor now will likely feel like they get worse. Even though they aren’t really. They tell him the scars on his back should have rendered him paralyzed in places. They tell him he still has iron embedded in his skin.

Taking it out would only cause more damage.

They tell him cosmetic surgery might be able to do something for some of the scars though surely not all.

He tells them not to bother. The part of him that never came out of that hole starts screaming at the mere thought of losing those moments of her forever trapped beneath his skin.

Sanity rules him again, and he doesn’t think of her often in those weeks turned to months as he recovers.

But sometimes at night or in the grueling pain of the physical therapy he pushes through he feels her memory consume him again.

Sanity is disturbed, but Dmitri doesn’t listen.

He stays until he is lithe with muscle and grace. Perhaps even more than he once was.He doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror. There are subtle changes in his body. Maybe in the way he holds himself? He can’t put a finger on the difference, but any trace of boyhood has been erased.

From his mind. His face. His body. His soul.

A man stares back at him. And it’s a man he almost doesn’t recognize. 

When he leaves the hospital he is given his cover. Given his new life and they teach him to be less, to appear as less.Apparently the new hardness in him is intimidating. IT assistances are not intimidating people. IT assistance. Of course he has the know how… but this… this is how they plan to use what they paid for so dearly?

It almost makes him wish they had decided to put him back into intelligence.

Sanity is disgusted with him for even thinking it.

**********

Arizona is hot. Why in the world would they moved a Russian to Arizona. A mountain Georgian Russian at that. It mystifies him. It doesn’t mystify sanity which of course points out the large immigrate population in Phoenix.

It makes perfect sense.

The months tick by. One. Then two.

Sanity loses ground bid by bit.

And so he spends his nights once again tracing the moments of her across his ruined skin. This women he didn’t know. This women that had saved him.

He has no purpose anymore.

Survival is no longer his purpose. Neither is saving his sister. Or his country.

He doesn’t even have a country.

He is purposeless and helpless all while being incredibly powerful in the many, many things he knows.

The first time he causes a scene sanity reemerges with a vengeance. The move him to a different company. They promote him and for a time that helps.

But not for long.

He can’t sleep. So he runs. He finds a 24hr gym trains and trains.

The pain in the night brings her back to him, and he drugs himself with that oblivion.

He slips up again. And then again. And they move him. Sanity and Dmitri are both surprised at their patience, but then again these people often deal with the worst kind of criminals. They ones that bought a new life with the blood of their friends. So maybe he is a welcome change of pace. No less deranged, but perhaps more worth the trouble.

So the months tick by. Five. Then six.

And then there is the bombing and that incessant woman.

And he wants to break things. He wants to break down the whole world. And he feels like he could. Like he really could.

He settles for the TV.

And ends up in jail. 

In that brightly lit cell he almost wishes he had done more damage. He hadn’t done enough to warrant any serious time and he almost wishes he had. That would have restored some sense of purpose. The purpose of survival.

Sanity, though distant and quiet, disapproves strongly.

He lays there all weekend. If the guards notice his usual comfort given his surrounds they do not say anything.

At night. For it is night despite the constant fluorescent lights. They only occasionally glance at him as he traces his scars murmuring Georgian lullabies to the moments of her trapped in his skin.

Sanity snarks he should be grateful they didn’t strip him. How oh how would Alexander Mirnov explain the scars of Dmitri Petrov?

He wishes they had. Wishes he could have seen the fear those marks would have brought to the faces of his captors.

What sort of monster endured what he had?

He has no money for bail. He has no one to call though he has no doubt they, his keepers, know where he is.

And he is content to wait.

More than content. 


	3. Purgatory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo I can't write constantly, there's always something in life that comes up or the inspiration just goes for a hike I don't know. Its been a hot minute I know. I’m terrible. I’ve always written in lurches, but I like to believe I never truly abandon anything I write. Its a short chapter Demtri's presence in season 3 isn't much, but I'm already working on the next chapter. I'm sure there are typos so apologies there, but thank you for the support and I hope you all continue to enjoy this fic!

It isn’t a long wait. Not nearly as long as he was hoping for anyway. Maybe it was overnight, but it hadn’t even felt like that long. He hadn’t called anyone and he hadn’t expected his keepers to respond so quickly.

Surely he had earned at least a few days in jail. Guess not.

Sanity was not pleased with Dmitri’s surprised reluctance to leave the cushy cell that passed for jail in America, but the question of who had actually bailed him out, so much sooner than he had expected, was one that both of them had.

But when he saw Henry standing there on the other side of the bars, well, none of the voices in his head where ready for that.

Disassociation was a key to surviving torture. Disassociation, he might argue, was a key to surviving life. In Mertvets Yama he had created an alternate reality. He had perfected disassociation to the degree that he could almost always choose the paths of association that his mind created. Of course this mind, this power, only existed outside the bonds of sanity and he needed sanity here in this world. The real world wasn’t Mertvets Yama, and yet somehow it still reminded him of it.

The point was even now that he had something resembling sanity to call upon when he needed it, Dmitri Petrov was a master of disassociating himself from any reality and as he walked down the street with Henry babbling on about court dates and a lawyer or something like that he was doing exactly that.

He wasn’t there. He was far away from this man he could neither hate or love. He was somewhere beyond any place where he could feel any sort of gratitude to his tormentor and savior.

He was beyond, but sanity was there making sure he would not be beholden to this man. He would pay back bail. He never wanted to see this man again.

 _Then you can’t kick in TVs_ Sanity hisses at him.

That was a valid point. Perhaps his handlers had called Henry. Perhaps they were finally realizing they had no hope of controlling the barely contained collection of death and rage and pain that he was. Perhaps they were afraid of him. Maybe they would lock him up. Maybe that would be for the best.

The sane part of his mind had all kinds of answers for Henry. He was alone. He was isolated. He had no path forward in life. There was no path forward in this life. The part of him that spoke may have resembled a sane person, but the bitterness and anger that rolled inside of him leaked out in his tone and with every movement of his body.

Whatever hope Henry offered it would turn out to be a false hope. Whatever answers were given they would not undo what had been done.

_But they might get you out of Arizona. You might not have to bend and break yourself into the minute walls of Alexander the IT specialist._

He ignored this, and yet still a fierce longing to be anything that allowed him to be more than this echoed across all parts of his being. It was a feeling strong and intense and it took him by surprise and he was asking for things he didn’t even know if he wanted. But the idea of more, the feeling of hopelessness, if he had survived hell for this pointlessness, it made him desperate.

And Henry had that power to change that. He wouldn’t use it. But he had that power. And he found himself again falling for the trap. Offering himself in exchange for some boon. But anything was better than this nothing, right?

When they told him why. When they told him he was stuck as Mironov. That they had made more deals and more promises and he was reminded again that he was just a pawn, he could feel the popping strands of sanity vibrating in his head.

Oh he really was going to lose it this time.

He really was going to lose it. He kinda hoped he’d lose it right there in their secret little pizza place hide out. Maybe take a couple of people down with him. The rush of taking another’s life would do nothing for sanity, but it might keep him living. He could see the violent fantasy play out in his head. It almost made him smile.

Did he want to live like that?

He wasn’t sure anymore.

And then it happened again. Just like in the darkness of torture when his mind had first thought of her and offered an escape, fate (he refused to think it was Henry) threw him another life line. And this one was real. It was the real one he had turned away from in the awful darkness.

 _Talia_ Talia **Talia**

And suddenly he was Dmitri. He was the man who had suffered all this to spare her life. To grant her life. And it was worth it. It was so worth it. She was healthy and beautiful and perfect. She was perfect. He was Dmitri Petrov. The man who had endured for this women. This real person with whom he shared flesh and blood and the other her who was so twisted in his psyche and burned into his skin suddenly palled in comparison to the brilliance of this reality. 

He had suffered for _this,_ and _this_ this feeling this sight was worth it.

He hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t seen her healthy and so grown ever. She was a women full with potential and life and love for the brother who had given it all to her. Suddenly the part of him that was sanity was so much more of him. The tenuous strands that had held him together moments before where now iron chains.

He was Demtri Petrov. Not the pawn of the powers of the world. Not a broken plaything for tormentors. Not a man so broken that breaking others brought him life’s purpose. No, he was a brother, a protector and the parts of him, the parts of him that were filled with the moments of her and the hate of Henry and the need to break and burn and punish for all that he had suffered, those parts fit now into a box which he closed tight.

He was not stupid or naive. Not even now in the moment of breathtaking joy. He knew that box would not stayed locked. Not even now as the truth of the why he suffered stood before him perfectly whole and healed did the broken part of his mind not whisper of betrayal. This one might have been the real reason. This one might ground him and bring him back to sanity. But the other her, the one that saved his mind so he could have this moment?

She would not be so easily forgotten. 


	4. Redefined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised! I really wish this fandom had more Stevie/Dmitri action its not their fault the writers butchered this story, but anyway....After this chapter the story is gonna diverge quiet significantly from the show to how I think it should have gone. I don't know how many chapters that will take. Maybe 3? We'll have to see. Any typos and mistakes are my own and I'm sure they're there. Thanks for reading!

The human body is an incredible thing. His body had betrayed him again and again refusing to die in the darkness. And now, now his body betrays him again.

He doesn’t know how he got here. The pain the doctors warned would come back when his mind recalibrated, it came back. At first he embraced it, just as he had embraced that pain in the darkness. He was able to live with it by living in the moments of her just as he had done as a breathing deadman.

When his joints ache from where they were bent and broken he traces the rough scars of manacles and ropes on his wrists and ankles where they hung him. Once again, he imagines running his fingers through the delicate swirls of gold and brown in her hair. He imagines the roughness of his hands tanging gently in her hair.

When his back burns and itches and swells from the marks of the whips, he remembers the fever dreams in the dark. The ones where the hot burn of the ruined ridges of flesh somehow became her pressed against him through the night.

When his bones ached from where they had splintered and come through his skin he imagines the cupid’s bow of her lips pressing against the pain and drawing it away like poison from a wound.

And he still counts his scars by the memories of her. He traces the brands on his skin as he traces the path of the black ribbon at her throat. Remembering the odd and entrancing the way it trembled with her pulse. He traces the raised silver scars of blades and imagines the rough pads of his finger tips dancing over the delicate juncture of her neck and shoulders, tracing the fine bones of her chest.

But the brokenness of his ribs, the places where they healed bumpy and gnarled and press tightly against his lungs when he runs in the night. That pain that has no scar. That is her eyes - untouchable yet present with every aching breath.

And so he lives with the pain by living in the moments of her, but it gets harder and harder the more sane he becomes. He can no longer recall, he can no longer lose himself to her, but the pain remains. It drives him mad the pain.

Why does he still have to feel this pain? Hasn’t he paid enough?

Hasn’t he paid.

And so he turns to the drugs. And the pain goes away. And then somehow, quicker than he had thought possible, its not about the pain anymore its about the high the drugs give him. The high the pain and the memories of her used to give him was something like this. And yet…

No it was nothing like this. There was nothing so sweet as this.

And he doesn’t know how he got here.

He managed it so well for so long, and when Talia came he managed it with her and she gave him everything helped him over and over. But moving to DC, it made it so much easier. And that was when he knew he had lost control.

He may have gained sanity, but it cost him his sobriety. It cost him the moments of her that had saved him. His drug addled brain could no longer recall. It didn’t want to recall anything besides the sweet release of his next hit. Even the reality that he was getting everything he had ever wanted, that he was back in intelligence making some sort of difference, was barely enough to make it through to him.

And then the fear in Talia’s eyes made him go without for day. Because he wasn’t an addict. Not really. Not like these pathetic American junkies.

The human body is an incredible thing, but this betrayal was so much worse than the first. The shaking and the sweating. It had only been a day. One day without the drugs and he couldn’t stand. He couldn’t walk.

And Talia? Sweet Talia brought the relief even as there were tears in her eyes as she looked at him whispering to him in Russian things he choose not to hear.

_Didn’t they ask you about drugs on your polygraph?_

He looked at her incredulous. How could she not know? Did she not truly understand what he was? What kind of dangerous merciless machine he was capable of being? He had been beating polygraphs since before he would have been considered an adult in this country.

He was a solider, a machine, a warrior, a survivor. He couldn’t be a drug addict. He wouldn’t be one if he just put his mind to it. And he made it through the first day triumphant. He could do this. He could. And he did.

He did right up until the torture that he had suffered, that so many had suffered, became the punchline of an office joke for two pampered idiot CIA agents. The breaking of bodies and minds and souls a trivialized into recruiting tactic. It was to much. His own physical pain flaring as he acknowledge the brutality and threw it back in their faces.

He needed something, anything to numb a pain that was no longer purely physical. It was the combined betrayal of his mind and body that was too much. It was simply too much. And he broke because the answer was as simple as the small pretty pills. And when was the answer ever so simple as that?

And in that moment it was her that saved him. Again.

Of course it was her.

It couldn’t have been anyone else.

In the convince store high as a kite she appeared. And he was so drugged, so completely gone he only had the barest recognition of her. This one wasn’t Talia, but she was as important. What was this one called….

What was her name…

And when she said it, it felt as though he had been struck by a physically- slapped hard across the face. It was her. How. _How w_ as he so far gone he couldn’t even realize, recognize the face and name that had saved his soul over and over and over in the past 2 years?

How was that even possible?

And it was that moment that he hated the drugs. In that moment the little pills were no longer the simple answer his mind had told him they were. He hated them. Hated **_this,_** this thing he had become, this thing that didn’t recognizes her. And for a second he had the clarity to see how far gone he really was. And he hated himself.

That trip was the last time in his life that he was ever high off the pills.

They weren’t worth it. Not even sanity had been worth losing her. And if sanity came with this poison he didn’t want it. He would be gloriously ludicrous the rest of his life. He would redefine sanity. He could never lose her. Somehow this imagined reality, the moments of her traced again and again into his skin, somehow that was now the sanity and this life he lived was insanity.

The voice that he called sanity echoed from the back of his mind. Given the choice between the drugs and his crazy mediations on a girl he didn’t know, it would chose the latter.

********

Sobriety wasn’t hard. He had expected it to be, but then he hadn’t really sobered up he had just done back to a pervious addiction. He trained hard welcoming the pain of it because with the pain she came back to him.

This pain was a clean pain. A clarifying pain that brought in reality. Sanity approved. It no longer bitched about his meditation on her. They grounded him, and together the broken insane parts of him melded with the newly formed and solidly sane parts and he was something resembling a whole person.

He was watched. And he felt it, but it did not concern him. And when Henry asked how he was. His answer was sure.

He wouldn’t be going back to that. He couldn’t. The cost was to high. A return to the drugs wasn’t a choice, it was an impossibility.

He did not love Henry. He did not trust Henry. But he didn’t hate or distrust him either, and he knew that his life could be very different right now if someone else had been in charge of what happened to him. The man had not earned Dmitri’s gratitude, but he had earned his respect.

So he went to his house, he played video games. And he was content with life. It was odd the connection between she who kept him sane and sober and the women that was Henry’s daughter was so faint as to be nonexistent. Of course she was his daughter, but to him, she was not of Henry. She was something else all together existing outside this dance of spies and handlers’ daughters.

For him she existed outside of all of it.

Of course in reality she was dangerously tangled up in every part of it. And the newly formed solid part of him in the back of his mind would not let him forget it.

********

When he saw her for the first time sober. When she called his name, he almost dropped his phone. The beauty of her standing there before him was everything. His mind was racing to catch every detail compare everything to the moments he had clung to for so long.

Sanity was scrambling for his cover story because she was here in reality and instantly tangled in all the dangerous webs he had mentally removed her from. An assignment, that sound plausible right? A suitcase. A trip.

Words Dmitri. Make words.

All of him was soaking up every second. She was talking to him. Here in the real world, she was talking to him. And she didn’t have a fiancé anymore. And thank god he had established something resembling sanity now because he was kind and apologetic not crazy.

He resolutely ignored the smug tug in the corner of his mind at the thought.

He told her to take care even as he soaked up every last second of her so different than his last memories. Hair lighter and wild around her face. Skin and eyes glowing with humidity and wine not the polish of makeup.

But she wouldn’t let him go. Ahh fuck. She’s never let him go.

And still he panicked. This wan’t right. He was dangerous. His life was dangerous. He wasn’t supposed to be in any relationships for like a year anyway cause of the drugs. Henry would really kill him this time. Or have him killed. And he couldn’t have anything to do with this shinning, stunning, _real_ Stevie.

But he would. Damnit.

Of course he fucking would.

The desire in her eyes. The not too subtle hints. This wasn’t real was it? So after the rational parts of him, the sanity in him, rejected her, he offered some other time. And when she took his phone his heart rate sky rocketed there were notes on there. Notes he had written in rehab notes to her. Addressed to her by her name. The irrational panic that she might find them flashed through him. But she simply gave him her number.

That night in the darkness he held the memory of the desire in her eyes in his head. It wasn’t the first time he had gotten off to the mental images of her, but somehow this time it was different. She wasn’t a magazine picture or super model. She wasn’t unobtainable.

She had looked at him with want in her eyes. At him.

He didn’t last long.

He texted her his name that night long after he could be sure she was asleep. Just so she would have his number too he told himself. It was only fair. And he held himself to that. He didn’t text again.


End file.
